Red Rising (Red Rising Saga 1)

We smash into a holoImmersion room. Sparks fly. I keep screaming and pushing so he cannot rip off my leg with the razor, still limp and looped around flesh and bone. He’s backpedaling, off balance, when I take him through a window and we spill out into the open air. Neither of us have gravBoots, so we plummet a hundred feet into a snowbank on the mountain’s side. We roll down the steep slope toward the one-mile drop, toward the flowing Argos.

I catch myself in the snow. I manage to stand. I can’t see him. I think I hear his grunt in the distance. We’re both muddled in the clouds. I crouch and listen, but my hearing still hasn’t recovered from Apollo.

“You’ll die for this, little boy,” Jupiter says. It comes as if from underwater. Where is he? “Should have learned your place. Everything has an order. You’re near the top. But you are not the top, little boy.”

I say something pithy about merit not meaning much.

“You can’t spend merit.”

“So the Governor is paying you to do this?”

I hear a howl in the distance. My shadow.

“What do you think you’re going to do, little boy? Going to kill all us Proctors? Going to make us let you win? It’s not the way things work, little boy.” Jupiter looks for me. “Soon the Governor’s Crows will come in their ships, with their swords and guns. The real soldiers, little boy. The ones who have scars you can’t dream of. The Obsidians led by Golden Legates and knights. You’re just playing. But they’ll think you’ve gone mad. And they will take you and hurt you and kill you.”

“Not if I win before they get here.” That is the key to everything. “There may be a delay on the holos before the Drafters see them, but how long a delay? Who is editing the gorydamn holos while you fight? We’ll make sure the right message gets out.”

I take my red sweatband off of my head and dab away the sweat on my face, then wrap it around my head once more.

Jupiter is silent.

“So the Drafters will see this conversation. They will see that the Governor is paying you to cheat. They will see that I am the first student to invade Olympus in history. And they will see me cut you down and take your armor and parade you naked through the snow, if you surrender. If not, I will throw your corpse from Olympus and piss golden showers down after you.”

The clouds clear and Jupiter stands before me in the white. Red drips from his golden armor. He is tall, lean, violent. This place is his home. It is his playground. The children his playthings till they get their scars. He is like any other petty tyrant of history. A slave to his own whims. A master of nothing but selfishness. He is the Society—a monster dripping in decadence, yet seeing none of his own hypocrisy. He views all this wealth, all this power, as his right. He is deluded. They all are. But I cannot cut him down from the front. No, no matter how well I fight. He is too strong.

His razor hangs from his hand like a snake. With the press of a button it will go rigid, a meter in length. His armor shines. Morning breaks as we face one another. A smile splits his lips.

“You would have been something in my House. But you are a little stupid boy, angry and of House Mars. You cannot yet kill like I can, yet you challenge me. Pure rage. Pure stupidity.”

“No. I can’t challenge you.” I toss my slingBlade down at his feet and throw my razor with it. I can barely use the razor anyway. “So I’ll cheat.” I nod. “Go ahead, Sevro.”

The razor slithers up from the ground, stiffens, and goes through Jupiter’s hamstrings as he wheels about. His slash goes two feet too high. He’s used to fighting men. Invisible, Sevro wounds Jupiter’s arms and takes the man’s weapons. The recoilArmor flows into the wounds to stop their bleeding, but the tendons will need real work.

When Jupiter is silent, Sevro winks off Apollo’s ghostCloak. We take Jupiter’s weapons. His armor wouldn’t have fit anyone except Pax. Poor Pax. He would have looked dashing in all this finery. We drag Jupiter back up the slope.

Inside, the tide of the battle has shifted. My scouts, it seems, have found what I told them to seek. Milia runs up to me, a content grin on her long face. Her voice, as ever, is a low drawl when she tells me the good news.

“We found their armory.”

A host of Venus Housemembers, only just freed from slavery, thunders past. Their pulseFists and recoilArmor shimmer. Olympus is ours and Mustang has been found.

Now we have all the axes.

43

THE LAST TEST

I find her asleep in a suite beside Jupiter’s own. Her golden hair is wild. Her cloak dirtier than my own. It hangs brown and gray, not white. She smells like smoke and hunger. She’s destroyed the room, upturned a dish of food, buried her dagger into the door. The Brown and Pink servants are scared of her, and me. I watch them skitter away. My distant cousins. I see them move, alien things. Like ants. So void of emotion. I feel a pang. Perspective is a wicked creature. This is how Augustus saw Eo as he killed her. An ant. No. He called her a “Red bitch.” She was like a dog in his eyes.

“The food was laced with something?” I ask one of the Pinks.

The beautiful boy murmurs something, looking at the ground.

“Speak like a man

,” I bark.

“Sedatives, lord.” He does not look at me. I don’t blame him. I’m a Gold. A foot taller. Worlds stronger. And I look positively insane. How wicked he must think me. I tell him to go away. “Hide. My army does not always listen when I tell them not to toy with lowColors.”